Where the Iron Crosses Grow

One hears one’s own heartbeat … the tunnel floor is littered with dead Russians and craters are evidence of the work of our artillery and the Luftwaffe. A pionier finds six antipersonnel mines and disarms them… Now we light up the first 50 meters of the tunnel with rounds from a flare pistol. Still nothing stirred. We send some machine gun fire into the interior of the tunnel. In many cases, the rounds echo, but no Russkies can be seen. Now we throw hand grenades and smoke grenades.⁷¹

Eventually, a few Soviets remaining in the tunnel appeared and surrendered. They informed the pioneers that the Soviet troops had abandoned the tunnel and retreated toward the Martynovski Ravine. The German troops were relieved that they did not have to fight a point-blank battle in the darkened tunnel with a large enemy force.

As a postscript to the fighting on Mekenzievy Mountain, Aleksandr’s group trapped underground in Coastal Battery No. 30 died a slow death. The German engineers continued to try and burn or blast them out for three days, but the battery’s demise was precipitated by a commissar who detonated one of the underground ammunition rooms in an effort to destroy both the garrison and the besieging Germans. The blast killed many and wrecked the interior of the battery. A few survivors emerged, and the Germans believed that no one else was left alive inside. In fact, Aleksandr and 20 of his men were still inside, and they waited until June 25 before exiting the battery through a drainage pipe on the side facing the Bel’bek River. Aleksandr may have been dressed in civilian clothing – his interrogation report does not mention it – but they broke into small groups and tried to infiltrate east along Haccius Ridge. They did not get far – Aleksandr was captured by German pioneers on the morning of June 26 and thoroughly interrogated.⁷² The interrogation makes no mention of his fate, but Manstein was angry that Coastal Battery No. 30 had proven so obstinate, and ordered Aleksandr turned over to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), who executed him. Later, when Aleksandr was lionized as a hero of Sevastopol’s defense, Manstein lamely claimed that he had been “shot while trying to escape.”

Sevastopol’s fate was decided in the two-week slugfest for the high ground around Mekenzievy Mountain. Both sides suffered thousands of casualties, but the Germans had triumphed due to superior small-unit leadership and plentiful air and artillery support. For the most part, the Soviet soldiers fought well and died well on Mekenzievy Mountain – there was no shortage of heroes in their ranks, either. Hundreds simply disappeared, buried in shell craters and rubble. Even in recent years, diggers in Sevastopol continue to unearth dozens of remains of fallen Red Army soldiers on the mountain.

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Whereas the fighting on Sevastopol’s northern front was often characterized by extreme violence and significant gain or loss of terrain, the fighting on the southern front was a war of position. Since December 1941, the front line in Sevastopol’s Sectors I and II had been a revisit to the trench warfare of World War I, with advances measured in yards. There was little glory to be had here for either side – no Ritterkreuz or Red Star – since it was a sideshow to the main fight on Mekenzievy Mountain. The inclusion of the Romanian Mountain Corps further highlighted that fact for General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico’s XXX Armeekorps. Fought atop the same soil where some of the most dramatic moments of the Crimean War of 1854–55 had transpired, the fight between XXX Armeekorps and two Soviet divisions entered obscurity even as it was occurring. Yet the three weeks of fighting on the Balaklava front was very much a soldier’s battle, where the mettle of each side was sorely tested.